As
I blogged before, I programmed a little Android game and
published it at Google Play, or the Android Market, which it was called still then. I wanted to see if and how you could make money of Android Game apps. Two months have been gone now since the game has been released, and I think it's time now to draw a conclusion:

I think the project can be classified as commercial failure. It has made a turnover of astonishing 16 euro so far. :)
As
written previously in detail, the game has been rated very nicely, and people seem to have liked it. A few websites reviewed the game as well positively, and the 'Lite' edition of the game I made was downloaded a few hundred times in the few weeks it existed. But still, sales of the full - 'HD' - version remained low, unfortunately.
So a few weeks ago, after 2 months I decided to make the game free: at least people should have fun with it. This caused a tiny boost in downloads, and quite a bit users are now playing the game. You can get it
here.
My personal conclusion from all this is pretty much the same as I read from other people on the web before I started this project: It's difficult to make money on the Android Market / Google Play with normal, sold apps. People using Android phones appear to expect free stuff, even if it comes cobbled with annoying ads or spyware.
At least, Google Play provides you with some detailed statistics of your apps. With a bit more than 2000 currently active game installs, I think those values might be interesting:
- My game is mostly installed on Android Devices with the version 2.3.3. Those make 63% percent of all installs.
- The latest Android Version 4 currently only is being used by 0.5% of all people playing my game. Ice cream Sandwich apparently still has a long way to go.
- The most used device is the Samsung Galaxy, no surprise there.
- The most used sub-version of the Samsung Galaxy Brand is the Samsung Galaxy Y with 8% of all users. I'm not sure if this device is really that popular, or maybe it's because also my main test device was a Samsung Galaxy Y, and the game runs nicest on that one.
So I'll probably not continuing to develop Android Games, and
keep creating and improving real software. :) But it was an interesting experience, and also if it has flaws: Google really created a nice OS with an excellent development environment for it. For creating fun and hobby projects, I can really recommend Android as software development target platform.